


Good Men Porn

by Lilliburlero



Category: Henry V - Shakespeare
Genre: Class Difference, Habits, Headcanon, M/M, variable pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-27
Updated: 2013-11-27
Packaged: 2018-01-02 20:17:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1061169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fluellen and Gower love each each other.  But they're both <i>bloody</i> irritating.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Men Porn

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a headcanon dump to the prompt: ["Any pairing: Do either have habits that annoy the other?"](http://lilliburlero.tumblr.com/post/68282720614/for-the-writing-prompt-meme-any-couple-do-either)
> 
> Posted mainly because _there must and shall be more Fluellen/Gower or at least Fluellen fic_. I was going to write _pour encourager les autres_ but that's a trifle too grim in a Fluellen-related context, isn't it?
> 
> Title notes: Henry V, IV, vii. There is no porn here, just a couple of thoughts that the impure will find impure, but I just wanted the fun of a G rating sitting beside "porn". Because I am, basically, 12.
> 
> Historical detail is out of my sketchy memory of Anglo-Welsh history, and I welcome correction which might make this more convincing.

Gower’s popular and competent. He mightn’t be exactly lightfoot, but he knows when a risk’s worth taking, and he won’t let anyone take one he wouldn’t take himself. He’s mighty good crack in an inn or round a campfire: the big laugh, the cheerful Kentish blasphemies. Fluellen’s—well, he’s pretty endearing once you get to know him, even if relaying a simple message about a mislaid barrel of arrows is likely to land you in for a lecture with Ancient Romans in it, and Christ's bones, he can _fight_. You wouldn’t want to be on the business end of his poleaxe— _ahem_ , anyway. So the ranks tend to say things like _great pals. Inseparable. Like brothers._ Rather than the things they might say otherwise. And they don’t see how much private wincing goes on.

Most of it’s Fluellen’s. It bloody hurt when that swollen scrote called him a mountain squire, because that’s _exactly what he is_. His ancestors owned fertile valley land and lived well on it. They were cultured men: they knew history and rhetoric, composed music and poetry, studied arithmetic, astronomy and philosophy. Fluellen’s great-great-grandfather lost the good land to gallant King Harry’s great-great-great-grandfather (or his colonists, rather), but he didn’t lose the work of memory, Mnemosyne, loveliest of goddesses. And he passed it on, and his son passed it on, and his only daughter, and her son was Fluellen’s father. But somehow all the nuance and harmony never quite comes out right in English, barbarous tongue. Nonetheless, Fluellen’s darling grandmother loved an Englishman, and so does he. 

He wonders if his grandfather, who died years before he was born, was quite as—he stops short of the word _coarse_ —as Gower. Not all Englishmen are coarse. The King is not coarse, though he is shockingly rash, to the point of crime, but then the King is more than a little Welsh. Gower’s voice is like the shofar of the Temple, even when he’s supposed to be bloody _quiet_. It has this ghastly, bossy, flat, given, received quality, as if even the most idiotically contentious things he says are just a matter of good sense and any man must own them as much a fact as _God made the world_. He remembers, sometimes, to turn from the company _before_ he spits and to chew with his mouth _shut_. Sometimes. He unselfconsciously picks his ears, nose, and teeth during conversations, and you have to repeat things so often you might be forgiven for thinking none of it's going in. He takes up so much space: sitting with his fists planted on thighs which are—Fluellen, who has a marksman’s eye, though his arms training was with sword and axe (it’s Gower who can draw a bow) glances and calculates—ten degrees more than a third of a circle apart, a posture which to Fluellen suggests an unconscious desire for castration rather than overmastering virility. His grandmother used to say that you could easily love an assassin, but you couldn’t love a man who snores, so he knows his grandfather didn't snore. Gower snores, bubbling, arrhythmic, sleep-murdering snores. Fluellen bloody well adores him, every last rude atom.

Gower’s never felt like this about a man before, and he’s a bit bashful about it. But it’s not in his nature to lie to himself. He loves Llewelyn, and he is very proud of his mastery of that double-l sound which causes him to hesitate slightly every time he says the name. That, and the fact that he _loves_ him. But he can be embarrassing, by Jesu. Well, that’s exactly it; how long has the man been talking English and he still can’t get his lips round the simplest—half-voluntarily, Gower thinks of Llewelyn’s lips, then collects himself. Twenty years, it must be: Llewelyn has told him about learning to speak English, but he doesn't always listen with both ears, as no-one could exactly blame him for. What could be easier than saying j or b? Boom! Jesus! A child could do it; well, some nippers can’t, and that’s why it’s a bit shy-making in a man past forty. He wishes Llewelyn wouldn’t give him what Gower thinks of as his _front parlour_ look when he makes a filthy joke, but even that’s better than Llewelyn trying on a bit of the old blue himself. That gag with the leek—dirty bollocks deserved it, but it was too much, and it just made Gower squirm. Still does.

On the other hand, people quickly learn not to use words like _heavy_ , _longwinded_ and _bore_ around Gower. He can’t quite explain it, and he wouldn’t stoop to explain it if he could, not while he still has strength in his right arm, but it’s that there’s actually something marvellously _light_ , and wickedly _funny_ about Llewelyn. It’s the way he starts off by saying something that sounds really obvious, and then keeps on asking silly questions, making the daftest comparisons and just when you’re starting to get really annoyed with him, he says something that wags your world right off its axis: _I’ll tell you there is good men porn—born at Monmouth_. And you suddenly see not just that the King is a fanatical bloody ice-hearted murderous bastard (you knew that) but that what you’ve been brought up to think of as _fame, renown, glory, nobility, chivalry_ (everything that’s been carefully placed by God and Dame Kind beyond the reach of Thos. Gower, yeoman) is actually simply being a fanatical bloody ice-hearted murderous bastard. With a crown on top.


End file.
